A very personal, and eclectic, collection of wargaming plots and projects; battles and campaigns... with pictures; lotsa pictures....

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Pile of Shame - Part 2: Wooden Muskets

My one Hinchliffe unit - or at least the 9 that required treatment.
Originally painted at the 68th Foot - Durham Light Infantry -
they are now the 51st Foot - 2nd West Riding
Light Infantry.

I spent most of last evening doing repair work on broken muskets and bayonets. A few just needed rejoining, but quite a lot of muskets had broken off at the left hand, so a bit more creative fixes were required.

Minifigs: men of 2nd /69th South Lincolns.

Not a pleasant job, fiddly and annoying. Probably superglue would have been better to use than my modelling glue, which takes quite a while to gain any adhesive property worth a hoot. It also helped (usually) to file the break flat, then score it for a better fit.

Having got the things to stick, I painted over the whole top half of the musket with PVA. I am hoping this will 'discourage' the muskets from snapping off again at the join.

Although the results don't look consistent, I'm happy to live with that. My past efforts have proved satisfactory: once painted these should look OK I reckon. I hope.

12 comments:

Well done! I don't know how sturdy they will be but they look like they will fit right in once painted. Over the years I have on occasion drilled out broken stubs, inserted wire and puttied over but I like your wooden ones better.

Btw there is something pleasing about rescuing an army. Always wanted some of those no longer approved Napoleonic British fusiliers in Bearskins. Of course I would need an army to fit them into.

Hi Ross,The toothpick method seemed to me the most satisfactory solution that I could come up with. It's fiddly, and a pain in the jacksey, but just about everything else I've tried doesn't look as good/ looks worse.

For the rest the army is 'as received.' The bearskins offer variety - as will the Highlanders whenever I get round to buying some - even though 73rd Perthshire was no longer a Highland regiment. Wargamers' licence, shall we say?Cheers,Ion

The fancy bamboo toothpicks that you can find are great as well. They are round with a point on one end and a flat head (with some finial work) on the other end. They make great flagstaffs (point down) and reasonable lances or spears for 28mm figures.

Cheers, Jeff -Those fancy toothpicks are useful in other ways as well. Part of the finial work at the blunt end make quite acceptable cascabels for scratchbuilt artillery. You don't cut just the end off, though: but keep a reasonable length to shove into the plastic tube you are using for the gun barrel.

I can dig it, Gowan. Because I misliked the puny spears on my Byzantines (quite OK figures otherwise), I replaced the top halves with pins (flattening the pointy ends with pliers). If that were not bad enough, they are continually snapping off. I now have a solution to that problem, but it's a bit late in the day!

Thanks for the offer, Rodger -...but I actually have 2 light infantry figures spare myself (unless I decide that it will be a 22-figure unit!). I am hoping that they prove more robust than they look, given care (and if this part of the world stops wobbling about). Of course the repair on these figures don't look like the originals, but that I find already scarcely noticeable.

I have to admit to being a bit Sheldon Cooperish about that sort of thing. Seeing spaghetti pikes, shoot-round-the-corner muskets, half-bayonets and assorted soldiery thus ... erm ... emasculated ... gives me the heeby-jeebies. You might have noticed my urge to straighten muskets whenever a bent one catches my attention. No doubt Sigmunt Freud and his acolytes would have something to say about that...